Semiconductor devices are used in a variety of electronic applications, such as personal computers, cell phones, digital cameras, and other electronic equipment. Semiconductor devices are typically fabricated by sequentially depositing insulating or dielectric layers, conductive layers, and semiconductive layers of material over a semiconductor substrate, and patterning the various material layers using lithography to form circuit components and elements thereon. Many integrated circuits are typically manufactured on a single semiconductor wafer, and individual dies on the wafer are singulated by sawing between the integrated circuits along a scribe line. The individual dies are typically packaged separately, in multi-chip modules, or in other types of packaging, for example.
Semiconductor wafer processing needs an environment virtually free from airborne molecular contamination (AMC) and particulate matter so the wafers may be processed without being contaminated. Accordingly, semiconductor processing is performed in clean rooms in which air is highly purified or filtered prior to its introduction into the clean room. Chemical filters are commonly employed to filter and purify the air prior to its introduction into the clean room.
As wafer processing is developed to nano level, more and more chemical filters are required to meet the tight AMC specification requirements for wafer processing. Further, as purified air must be provided to entire clean rooms, the energy needed for purifying the air is huge. Therefore, there are challenges to minimizing the AMC and the energy of making purified air.